BigCommerce vs Shopify -
Making an Informed Decision
It is the dream of every retailer to take their brick-mortar shop to the next level – the virtual plane. Fighting the cut-throat competition, studying the market analytics, weighing all pros and cons, it takes immense assessment on the part of any business owner to make the right and informed decision. One of the most critical decisions in this venture is to decide upon the right ecommerce website builder. In this blog we shall draw upon comparative analysis for two leading platforms Shopify and BigCommerce. BigCommerce vs Shopify web application development Which is the best for who, why and how they can help your ecommerce business. Let’s go!
BigCommerce & Shopify: The OG Ecommerce Website Builders
In the realm of ecommerce website building and hosting platforms, both Shopify and BigCommerce stand out. They have helped millions of brands materialize their digital presence with their robust features and streamlined solutions. Both platforms provide a plethora of tools and a free trial for people to explore and weigh their capabilities as per their needs. And while both provide similar features, they also have notable differences.
BigCommerce & Shopify: Similarities & Differences
Similarities
Pricing model
- Both platforms are based on a periodic-subscription model and have similar pricing.
Features
- Both offer unlimited products to the business owner, file storage, decent bandwidth on all their plans which is also inclusive of dynamic storefronts, POS, online sales channel, and gift cards.
Security
- Both offer the inherently essential tools for shipping, secure socket layer certificates (SSL).
Themes
- Both offer responsive themes, however considering mobile marketplace, Shopify is considered a step ahead for offering more responsive theme designs and usability.
SEO
- Both Shopify and BigCommerce enable business owners to integrate Google Analytics for analyzing user behavior in their shops.
Also read more on SHOPIFY PLUS VS SHOPIFY (2024) : WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Differences
Learning Curve
- BigCommerce is more feature rich, which is further scalable. Hence it has comparatively a higher learning curve.
- Shopify has a comparatively linear learning curve as a base platform by letting business owners integrate these thousands of applications.
Third Party Applications
- BigCommerce offers a pool of built in features, however Shopify offers more than 8000 third-party applications, both free and paid on its app store.
- Shopify offers third party applications for offering a wide range of discount functionalities at different junctures, i.e at cart level, quantity breaks, tiered pricing, and specific customer groups. Meanwhile, BigCommerce enables business owners to incorporate cart level discounts, coupon codes, and automatic discounts for specific customer groups without any third party application considerations.
Free & Paid Themes
- Shopify offers 8 free themes, while BigCommerce offers 12. On the other hand, on the paid themes front, Shopify offers 70 themes and BigCommerce offers 150.
Payment Gateways
- Shopify offers 100 payment providers for supporting customer’s preferable payment methods. BigCommerce offers only 65 pre-integrated online payment options.
SEO
- On the SEO aspect, BigCommerce has enabled several out-of-the-box features, like optimized URLs, unique URLs, embedded microdata in the product pages, and automatic URL rewriting for automatically amending the URL, each time a product is renamed. Shopify enables business owners to add keywords, meta titles, keywords and edit URLs to the blog posts.
- Shopify offers standard reporting with the mid-tier plan and more advanced reporting tools with the most premium plan. However, BigCommerce offers professional reporting tools as part of each plan.
- BigCommerce fairs well when it comes to offering out-of-the-box SEO features. But Shopify has a better assortment of third party applications for the SEO purposes.
| Feature | Shopify | BigCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Software Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Free Template Available | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Basic Shopify Plan: USD 29; Shopify: USD 79; USD 299 | BigCommerce Standard: USD 39; BigCommerce Plus: USD 105; BigCommerce Pro: USD 399; BigCommerce Enterprise: custom pricing as per requirement |
| Unlimited Products, Bandwidth, and File Storage | All Plans | All Plans |
| Additional Staff Users | Basic Shopify: Two; Shopify: Five; Advanced Shopify: 15 | Unlimited staff members on all plans |
| Security | Free SSL certificates on all plans, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliant | Free SSL certificates on all plans, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliant |
| Transaction Fee | Zero percent on all plans only if using Shopify Payments. If using an external payment gateway, transaction fees are 2% for Shopify Lite and Basic Shopify; 1% for Shopify and 0.5% for Advanced Shopify. | No transaction fees on any plan no matter what system is used to process card transactions |
| Mobile-Friendly | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Support | Shopify Lite offers 24/7 live chat and email. All other plans offer 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support. | All plans offer 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support. |
Bottomline: BigCommerce v.s Shopify – Which one should you choose?
BigCommerce and Shopify are both powerful ecommerce platform builders that cater to the requirements of different and diverse businesses. Shopify excels in simplicity, being the top-most choice for beginners and small business entities. Meanwhile, BigCommerce offers more advanced deployment for customization that is well suited for larger business entities or users who have fair coding skills.
Hence, when deciding on which one to choose for your business, assess and make an informed decision based on the crucial perimeters like budget, design preferences, specific needs, scalability and growth plans for the business.
As Ecommerce continues to grow, businesses need a strong online presence more than ever. An ecommerce store that is reliable, robust, and secure is important to us at our ecommerce development company. As a result, we’re delighted to announce that we’re now connected to Shopify, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world.
Our ecommerce solutions are designed to meet the needs of clients of all sizes. Our team has years of experience building successful online stores tailored to the needs of companies of all sizes
